PINSKY'S WORKS ARE WINDOWS TO OTHER WORLDS

Barbara B. BuchholzCHICAGO TRIBUNE

The images in Joanna Pinsky's large, shaped canvases were inspired by deteriorating urban and rural structures that she began photographing about seven years ago. But don't expect to see the farmhouses, barns, bridges or lofts she captured on film, however.

Pinsky uses what's realistic only to direct the viewer into her canvases, which become rearranged multidimensional worlds. The painted doors and windows appear open thanks to the angled sections of canvas and provide interior as well as distant views.

Though each structure seems to have been abandoned, she has imaginatively fashioned a world that still seems alive and vibrant through her incorporation of real materials -- sand, sawdust, rock salt and gravel shavings -- and her choice of swirling brush strokes that suggest a storm, wind or fire outside.

The dark blue and greens of "City Shroud" are so convincing that the trainlike rumblings of a tornado can almost be heard. "Causeway II," with a fiery orange and yellow in one part of its canvas, is the most terrifying. "Freightyard," with silos and a stream coursing through, is the quietest.

- John Wilkes Booth may be considered one of the most despicable characters in American history, but Chicago painter Brian Calvin forces viewers at a new exhibit to take a more balanced look at President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, even if temporarily.

While Calvin isn't trying to suggest that Booth may have been innocent of one of the country's most heinous crimes, he pushes the idea in paintings that most historical events are more complicated than a simple explanation can relate or than one picture can depict, and that even wicked people may engender some sympathy.

The idea for the show at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery grew from Calvin's prior experimentation with large, cartoon-style, one-dimensional figures.

"I'm not interested in inventing new characters but in using ones that the American audience takes for granted and changing them so that people wonder if what they thought really was, is in fact true," he says. "I found that if I changed the dimensions of the cartoon figures dramatically, it caused people to pause, look longer and think differently."

He decided to rework Booth's image after checking out a book titled "A True History of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Conspiracy of 1865." "(Author Louis J.) Weichmann lived in the boarding house along with the conspirators who were involved in the plot to kidnap, not necessarily kill, the president, and he became the government's chief informant," Calvin says.

To make his point that history and people should be given a less superficial glance, Calvin didn't arrange his paintings as would be expected -- chronologically. He started with the exhibit's title -- "God's Plot and John Wilkes Booth" -- and a drawing of a hand to hint at the idea that someone else's hand(s) may have helped pull the trigger. The hand also literally points the way to how Calvin wants his pictures to be viewed.

One called "Ford's Theatre" depicts the theater with an image of George Washington pinned to an American flag bunting. The theater is empty, leaving open the question of whether Lincoln has yet to arrive or has been shot.

Other paintings reveal a more romanticized style and melodramatic undercurrent. "O, To Die a Common Cutthroat" shows Booth dying, eyes open and his final words "useless, useless" streaming from his mouth.

Other paintings reflect a more childish style, played up in simplified figures and backgrounds. In "Don't Condemn Me," Calvin shows a log cabin, both a symbol of an idyllic landscape and of Lincoln's modest upbringing, surrounded by the words of the title, which are drawn to resemble logs. Calvin signed the work "Booth." In a rogues-gallery style grouping of characters, the four conspirators are pictured in separate paintings, identified as ringleader, heavy, feeble-minded, and stooge.

Both shows continue through Saturday. Joanna Pinsky's work is at Perimeter Gallery, 750 N. Orleans St. Brian Calvin's work is at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery Inc., 325 W. Huron St.